Game is an on rails campaign shooter first and foremost, which is great btw, but if you came in wanting some deep detective work gameplay, you may be disappointed. You just pick stuff up along the way and string the clues up on the board, but there is no real choice or nuance. It's mostly just there for visual storytelling, like I said, it's pretty on rails. It's not like LA Noire where you gather the clues you can find and then try to correctly guess whodunnit. This game has way more in common with Bioshock than it does LA Noire in terms of gameplay.

So far 7.9/10

Bungie actually did something quite experimental with this game imo. A AAA studio like bungie releasing an extremely niche super-future dystopian cyberpunk extraction shooter for $39.99 is actually quite surprising. I for one actually really love the art-style, the UI, and menus/music. Everything aesthetically clicks very hard for me at least. The gameplay is good, and the guns feel nice.

Unfortunately after that is where we start seeing some of the cracks form. One of my biggest complaints about the game all the way back from when it first was in closed playtest was that the game doesn't really feel like an extraction shooter. The way it's setup with the team abilities and incentivizing team play with squad fill and how the maps are set up it feels much more akin to a battle royale like Apex Legends, but with an extraction mechanic added. Teamfights, while fun, revolve around this 3v3 competitive playstyle that will ultimately feel static and repetitive over time. There is no uncertainty, like those moments in Tarkov if you're playing with a friend and you hear footsteps nearby and your heart starts racing because you don't know what's around the corner, it could be a lone wolf player, or a 5 man. Those kind of variables keep raids in Tarkov engaging, heart-pumping, and unique. Marathon doesn't really have that. Sure the moment-to-moment combat is good, really good even, but the static predictability that the next pvp fight is going to be a 3 man sucks out all of the possible unique memorable moments over a long period of time.

Another big complaint is the maps. As of now there are only 3 maps, Perimeter, Dire Marsh, and Outpost (which I have yet to unlock). But from playing Perimeter and Dire Marsh alone I can say the layouts and designs are pretty subpar overall. These maps are built like battle royale maps with little multiplayer map landmarks randomly littered around. Every building looks the same, and plays the same. Tight scientific corridor, and that's about it. There are a few unique exceptions like Quarantine in Dire Marsh, but other than that everywhere starts feeling the same after a while it all kinda blends in. There are no MASSIVE indoor maze buildings like Interchange from Tarkov, or unique scaling terrain like in The Cycle: Frontier. And just these 3 maps and maybe a 4th secret map altogether for $40 is just not enough at all. Especially with how small the maps feel. Compare this to Tarkov, where I paid $40 for the standard edition and the game not only comes with 11 maps, but also your own hideout you can build upon and customize to your liking.

In total, while Marathon does present a generally fun core gameplay loop and good gunplay, overall from the surface, the game seems to fail to present enough content to warrant a $40 purchase, nor does it present enough unique gameplay that will hold it over other extraction shooters over time. Maybe if I play more of the full release more unique gameplay opportunities will present themselves, but from what I've played so far over the past year from the closed playtest to the server slam to now, I doubt that will be the case.

Edit: OH! I almost forgot to mention this but selling items in your stash is a HUGE pain in the ass. You mean I can sell only 1 item at a time and I literally have to HOLD F for every single item I want to sell?!? The fact that you can't mark multiple things in your stash for sale and then sell them all at once is a huge oversight, there's absolutely no way they don't add this feature in the future as once your stash gets really big, it's going to be so monotonous holding f over and over to sell 1 item at a time. OH!!! and another thing! Why TF can you not clear a keybind??! Did it just slip past the developers' minds? What gives?

How in the world is this game $60.00 in 2026 10 years after release? Sure, they've added a TON of content and things to do, but they still have yet to add any MEANING to any of it. After the honeymoon phase of exploration ends, you finally sit there and look around like "Wow, this has all really just been one big waste of time hasn't it?" It's been like that since the beginning and even with all of the updates that conclusion ultimately remains the same. There is nothing to learn, no skills to improve, no real fun to be had. Repetitive loops of endless exploration, mediocre combat, and static difficulty progression await for you in No Mans Sky.

YOU HAVE TO PAY TO GO BACK TO TUTORIAL ISLAND?!?? WTF IS EA DOING?!?? Why does an early access game even have seasons, season passes, and upcoming paid DLC?!? FINISH THE GAME!

Game Issues and potential improvements.

They need to massively fix her ledge detection, and also maybe add a shimmy mode. There were a few falls I had where I was at the top of the climb and she just WOULD NOT pull herself up to the top. And some of the ledge shimmys you do seem fine, but she will panic so hard out of nowhere sometimes simply because the hands are not grabbing onto a hold, and when she runs out of stamina she just yeets herself off the mountain.... very frustrating.

Grab buff might just be too strong imo. It turns you into literal spiderman as you are able to scale up anything with little to no need for any solid holds. It's just something I find a little too gamey imo and might require a nerf of some kind.

The ayahuasca trip needs to be skippable. It is cool seeing it the first time, but not being able to skip it after already going through it once is kinda buns. I know technically it is gameplay and not just a cutscene, but still. It's a dream, let's be able to skip please.

I still think they need to fix legs more still. I know that they did some tweaking to the legs from the demo, but I feel like it's not enough, I'm fine with legs going up as high as they let you in the game, my issue is being able to crossover legs almost to splits lengths still. It looks so jank when the right leg is all the way flat on the left and vice versa.

Co-op!!! I know this was built from the ground up as a solo game, but even if there were a slight chance for co-op to be implemented I would love to be able to have a climbing partner. Like being roped together to them that would be so sick.

It's good, and they did really good at making the flow of the game less rigid and stiff. Game feels great to play, only a few stutters when I loaded game up for the very first time. Buttery smooth after that. Some of the changes with the story actually aren't too bad, it changed a lot more than what I was expecting, but overall I think they were fitting and again made game feel more seamless. The new weapon effects are my favorite. The force gun is so crazy fun it was my favorite weapon in the base game. (although they did remove the cannonball which was the best part of the force gun, gravity well is okay cool to look at though)

To my main issue..
It's not nearly as scary as the OG.
-Base necros don't do the sprint anymore.
-Loot doesn't feel scarce enough, especially on harder difficulties. I played on hard and I never once felt like I was too low on ammo, never did I have to purchase health packs, never did I feel like I was so low on resources that I would have to resort to more creative ammo-conserving ways to kill enemies like melee or kenesis, instead I would just blast away and have plenty of ammo to spare after the fact
-The elite version enemies just are nowhere near as scary as they were in OG. 2 Elite brutes in OG DS almost made me cry, while in this game im just laughing at them they're so easy to kill.
-There's something about the audio I can't explain, but it just doesn't feel as immersive and scary as OG
-A few of the scenes are nowhere near as scary. The final scene in the shuttle made me laugh it was so not scary, the OG one was like a legit jumpscare. This one she just jumps forward all slow...idk it just wasnt scary at all.

I will say this. OG wasn't even THAT scary, especially after you've played it once or twice. I'm just saying that I believe if I played this for the first time like a new player that didn't play OG, I wouldn't be nearly as scared playing it like I was the first time I played OG.


Also the marker, and unitology stuff.. idk, it feels like they're almost over-explaining it all to you in the remake, while in OG it was like a lot of it you were figuring out the details on your own by connecting the dots. I'm not going to say it's heavy handed here, but it is teetering on that line.

YES YES YES! What an improvement over Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy! I've been playing all the Quantic Dream games in order since they went on sale! And while initially not presented as cinematically posed as Indigo, Heavy Rain does a much better job over time. While Indigo seemed to lose steam near the end and ended up falling pretty flat near the end, Heavy Rain does almost the complete opposite. The game honestly starts out pretty lukewarm and underwhelming but just gets better and better over the course of the story. The controls also see a massive improvement as well over Indigo. While quicktime is still the bread and butter of these games, at least its not as bad as the visual vomit of the simon says overlay in Indigo. I also enjoyed how much more grounded and realistic this game's story was over Indigo's over-the-top eye rolling psychological action. If you're into interactive Dramas and just want a game to chill out for the story this is absolutely perfect as there really isn't anything out there like this. Closest I could say is probably L.A. Noire.

Much better improvement overall from Indigo on almost all fronts, except say for the voice acting at times. It still can be a bit give or take here. Overall I'd give it an 8.6! Excellent Game.

Very interesting premise of a story for a game of it's time. You don't really see many Psychological/Paranormal Crime thriller games on the market like this at all. That being said I am very mixed. The story, while actually surprisingly good, seems to be REALLY rushed around the 3rd act and falls off quite a bit because of that. Many odd sequences happen plus an out of nowhere sex scene/romance sequence that happens like 2 feet from a little girl with the only thing separating them is a thin metal wall of train.. Also tyler was a good character but the fact you can just...leave...in the third act is so undercooked for his character it makes you feel like you completely wasted your time playing as him at all.

Then there's the gameplay. It is a Quantic Dream game so as always "gameplay" is somewhat of a stretch but here its pretty bad.

There are two main types of gameplay you will experience. The first is the usual Quantic Dream gameplay where you control a character around in a limited 3d space and use the stick on the controller to interact with certain objects in the environment like cabinets, doors, telephones, computers, etc. Its honestly not that bad, it's kind of neat and helps contextualize and make spaces you walk around in seem like actual lived in and interactable spaces. The worst part with this gameplay is the CAMERA. My god it is so bad sometimes, sometimes you can move the camera around the character and sometimes you cannot and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason on why you can or can't in a particular time. Sometimes you're walking and then the camera automatically changes angles and now you can't figure out which way you need to move the stick to walk because the way you move the stick does not automatically translate to the direction your character will walk and it is sometimes so frustrating.

The other main type of gameplay is by far my biggest complaint about the game. Basically during most cutscenes, you will have to engage in a sort of Simon Says/Quicktime event minigame that plays on the screen as you watch the cutscene. Not only does this get old after like the first two times you do it. But the way it's layed out right in the middle of the screen makes no sense whatsoever. You can't even see what the hell is happening in the cutscene because your focus is completely on making sure you don't miss any of the quicktime events and it's right in the middle of the freaking screen! It's so tedious and just outright bad.

With all that being said though I did overall enjoy my time with the game despite it's major flaws. It is a very original story and I am glad that I played it through to the end. On to Heavy Rain! 6.4/10

Fry from futurama meme:

Not sure if just a really neat Idle game

or mining bitcoin off my computer

The characters are probably the best they've made, but overall I think It Takes Two is a bit better overall. The minigames are sorely missed, and the little sidestories while they do help switch things up, they can also mess with the pacing in a negative way. I thought it was maybe a liiiitle too long as well, and the story and gameplay didn't wow me or anything until the very last level. Gameplay is very good and solid overall. 8.7/10